Completionist

I have finally made an app specifically for Android devices. If it does well enough, I might port it over to other platforms.

Why not give it a try? It's free!



Can you finish every song lyric?

Do you know the name of every movie?

Then prove it.

Completionist is the pop culture word game that challenges you to prove you know everything.

With hundreds of questions across more than a dozen categories, you might never finish it all.

Are you a completionist?

Categories include:
-cartoons of the 1980s
-hit songs of the 1970s
-reality shows
-box office hits
-and, of course... T

As you can see, I didn't fare so well when I was making the screenshots. I think you can probably do better.

Slow to Upgrade

For my latest app, I decided to try out Android. Unfortunately, the Android OS install base is fragmented quite severely. As such, I stuck with version 2.1 so I could reach the maximum number of users. A few days ago, I gave up on it. The market share for 2.1 has shrunk below 5%, and there was a feature in 2.2 that I needed to help handle the audio. I could've spent hours trying to figure out a decent workaround, but instead I decided that reaching 95% of the audience is good enough. Eventually those 2.1ers will upgrade to new phones. My sanity may not eventually return if I have to spend all day banging my head on the keyboard.

Word Scramble

Word scramble brings the classic jumbled words puzzle to your BlackBerry PlayBook.

Unscramble the words, then letters from the words create a new, jumbled up solution. Unjumble the solution to find the answer to a riddle, a joke, or a truly terrible pun. It's fun for the whole family!

Two ways to play: Drag the letter tiles, or just tap.

With more 70+ puzzles, you get more than you'd get from your local newspaper in an entire year! All for one low price. How can you pass up that deal?

Word Scramble Landing Page

Hi, thanks for indulging me. Please leave a comment letting me know if there are any features you'd like added to the app. Maybe bookmark this page and come back to it later.

And, why not check out one of my other apps:

Completionist - A fast-paced pop culture trivia game.

Scooter Wants Cheese - A fun maze game where you help Scooter the mouse reach his cheese

Lapse Master - Time Lapse Photography

Awesome Word Search - Word search puzzles with over 12,000 words in more than 40 categories

GPS Data Master - Finally put your Playbook's GPS to good use.

Awesome Sudoku - The classic number game with nearly infinite puzzles and three kinds of hinting

Answer Ball - The answers to the mysteries of the universe are yours... in ball form

Only a Buck - Five apps in one, all for less than a dollar


Or, you could donate. I don't expect you to, but a buck or two would be most appreciated.

Earnings

A lot of developers won't post their earnings for whatever reason. Maybe they're embarrassed by their success or lack thereof, or they're hiding money from the government, or who knows what. Because of that, it's very hard to figure out what you might be able to earn as an independent app developer. The upper limit is in the millions, while the lower limit is zero, but beyond that, there's no way to tell.

So, in an effort to help people out, I'm going to provide a bit of my Playbook app sales data for this past month.

Here are the sales numbers for five of my apps:

The exact total's a bit of a pain to calculate due to the different currencies involved, but the total looks like it comes to about $65 or an average of $13/app. Since I only get 70% of that, my personal profit on these five apps comes to $45.50 or $9.10/app. Which works out to just about 30 cents per app per day. Meaning that in order to make the equivalent of a $10 per hour job, I'd need to put out somewhere in the neighbourhood of 200 apps.

Now, these are just my numbers, and they may be atypical, but even at 25x my earnings, the numbers aren't good.

Just for fun, here's the download data for five different apps:

Again, it's hard to tell what the totals are, but it looks to be around 5000 or so. If I could earn $1 per download, I'd be a reasonably happy guy.

Android Versions

Google divides its various Android releases based on what they call API Levels. An API Level may contain multiple versions of the OS that implement minor bug fixes, or it may just be a single version. When you design an Android app, you choose an API Level to target, and every device running that level and above should be able to run your app. API Level 16 made its debut recently, so I thought I'd make a relevant post.

At the moment, there are about ten API Levels with a statistically significant share of the overall Android device market. Now, despite the fact that level 11 debuted about 16 months ago, devices running at that level and above currently only comprise a total of 13% of the Android market. Versions in the 2.x range, occupying API Levels 7-10 now hold a whopping 86% of the market. Which means, if you want to target the greatest number of people possible, your best bet is to go for API Level 7 or 8. Which sucks because version 3.0 introduced some really useful features. For instance, being able to use Property Animation would've saved me a load of time today. It's going to get better in the future, but right now, the version lag is really kind of a bummer.

No More Try & Buy

As of a few weeks ago, RIM has deprecated the Try&Buy licence for the Playbook. Which means I can no longer make any updates to any of the apps I've listed in that fashion. I say good riddance. The whole thing never worked properly, and it was a total pain. From now on, it's in-app purchases for me.